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July 12, 2017

Picasso, machine, and a life-affirming spiritual quest

Dear Ram and Vinod,

I am reading your debate about Samadhi. I know TM has been scientifically studied and verified. Is there any scientific study (medical, neurological etc. with instruments) of a Yogi who goes in and out of Samadhi? My frustration is that every time I ask someone, he says you cannot describe it! You have to experience it by yourself! Then it is difficult to do science in this area. Descriptions in books have limited validity. Science would not have progressed if people had to just read books by scientists and believe them. Real scientific advance takes place when any one can reproduce the results described in books!

Best Regards.

Kashyap

Hi Kashyap,

I agree with you. We cannot take others' experiences for granted because NS state experiences are ineffable. Therefore, we have to attain SS/NS states to experience without any subjective biases (brain-wash by heavy training under a guru who usually follows Advaita/idealism or SAnkhya/dualism) with deep understanding of all 4 groups of metaphysics (including dual-aspect monism and materialism). Perhaps, mantra or breathing based techniques are free from biases. Then do research; we should then be subjects in fMRI/EEG experiments. So, let us starts meditation seriously.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and paper on parallels between Sankhya and de Broglie waves. I have read your paper and agree the parallels are intriguing and suggestive. Three questions such parallels raises for me are

1) does the fact that subtle (and causal) bodies can be experienced contingent on state of consciousness (samadhi here representing a whole set of distinct states of consciousness—perhaps collectively referred to as the fourth or ‘turiya’ state) imply that something mathematical and not observable like de Broglie waves, may yet be observable contingent on state of consciousness;

2) can we say that mathematical conceptualization constitutes a sort of ‘observability’, a somewhat larger class than observability through the senses;

3) is there a kind of ‘Born rule’ for subjective states of consciousness that links subtle states with gross states of consciousness parallel to the actual Born rule that links the unobservable wave function to observable matter?

Best wishes,

Siegfried

Dear Siegfried,

Thank you for carefully reading my paper and the questions.

Your question 1) does the fact that subtle (and causal) bodies can be experienced contingent on state of consciousness (samadhi here representing a whole set of distinct states of consciousness—perhaps collectively referred to as the fourth or ‘turiya’ state) imply that something mathematical and not observable like de Broglie waves, may yet be observable contingent on state of consciousness?

Answer: The subtle and causal bodies are nothing but the totality of our conscious and unconscious thoughts, emotions, memories, desires, etc. The word 'body' indicates they all belong to one individual. Causal body is the subconscious or unconscious mental content and subtler than the subtle body. [...]

Regarding question 3): The above neuroscientific fact says that a link exists between the the subjective RI contained in a conscious experience with the objective neural correlate; the latter can be observed by means of physical devices, and agreed upon by a team of neuroscientists. As explained in the above paper in neuroquantology, they are both created by mind-brain interaction which collapses the quantum brain and that is when awareness of the percept/RI (figure 2 in my jcer paper) of an external or internal object occurs. Note that the brain'owner is never aware of the neural correlate but only aware of its 'meaning'/RI. I have not thought about any Born-like rule yet.

Best Wishes

Syamala

...

As per my reply to Paul Werbos, I do not accept relativity’s conflation of time as a dimension of space-time. I just don’t. This assumption is as integral to my line of thinking as is the invariance of the laws of the universe with respect to the Lorentz transformations.

Given your confidence in the established evidence, what’s your take on some of the refutations of relativity theory that occasionally crop up? For example,

[Sadhu Sanga] Re: Physicists provide support for retrocausal quantum theory, in which the future influences the past

Alex,

I'd love to know more about what you've shown for mechanisms behind complementary medicine.

The question I was awkwardly raising was about progress in theories of consciousness in positing explanations for the "highest" forms of goal-oriented action: specifically where the goals are emergent in the course of the action, rather than clearly representable at the onset of it.

I'll be surprised, but not shocked, if someone comes up with a computational device, neural-network based or whatever, that can produce images an expert can't tell from Picasso or Rembrant. By contrast, I'll be totally shocked if anyone ever comes up with a computational device that produces a new, coherent body of art as different from anything before it as Picasso's later work was from Rembrant.

My bet is that human consciousness is far more like Picasso than like an adding machine, on the whole. So when there's discussion of computers and consciousness, I'm curious what sort of theoretical bridge could lead to computers that are oriented to the "highest" goals, the truly creative ones.

Personally, I'll be happy if we turn out to be in a universe where conscious computers are just impossible. Yet with so many bright people claiming otherwise, I'm curious what the theory would look like that could lead to a Picasso-level computational system, capable not just of derivative art, but of producing truly new, commanding work, or inventing a field of science that hadn't existed before.

... The results of actions could even manifest themselves in the next life. There are, however, other views such as that of Sri Aurobindo, that suggest that karma is not about reward and punishment, and that whatever happens in life provides an opportunity for spiritual progress. ...

CULTURE AND ENGLISH STUDIES IN INDIA

K Kapoor - Cultural Studies in India, 2017

99 Transpersonal Counselling Psychology

J ROWAN - Counselling Psychology: A Textbook for Study and …, 2017

[HTML] “Dharm is technology”: the theologizing of technology in the experimental Hinduism of renouncers in contemporary North India

AE DeNapoli - International Journal of Dharma Studies, 2017

... sādhus' views of communication technologies has been a component of the experimental outlook of ancient yogis (Stoler Miller 1996) as well as modern holy figures like Mahatma Gandhi (see Howard 2014; see also Bakshi 1998), Vivekananda, and Aurobindo Ghose (Brown ...

... In 1911 Sri Aurobindo said about this book, 'His history of Ancient Indian civilization is a masterly compilation, void of original research which is rapidly growing antiquated.'(Ghosh 66) Although, Dutt was not a researcher or a professional historian,(Chandra 84) this book should ...

Witness in the Era of Mass Incarceration: Discovering the Ethical Prison

D Larson - 2017

[PDF] www. expressionjournal. com ISSN: 2395-4132

RA Prajapati

... The lineage of Indian English poetry is very large. Henry Louis Vivian Derozio is considered the first in the sequence of Indian English poetry. There are several remarkable poets like Nissim Ezekeil, Toru Dutta, Sarojini Naidu, Rabindranath Tagore, Shri Aurobindo. ...

The Cinema of Bimal Roy

SA Chatterji

Tech(k)no(w)logos: Hyper-Technology and Post-Humanism
Silika Mohapatra - Journal of Contemporary Thought, Summer Issue (2016), Volume Number 43http://fctworld.org/2016%20Summer.htm
ABSTRACT
This paper is an investigation into the nature of technological objects, situated against the backdrop of recent theorizations in areas like post-human studies and object-oriented ontology. It attempts to articulate the phenomenological and ontological ramifications of hyperreality, surveying various contemporary technological inventions and their impact on how we conceive concepts like reality, actuality and virtuality.

Silika Mohapatra teaches Philosophy at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi. She is the co-editor of the book Indian Political Thought: A Reader (London: Routledge, 2010), and the managing editor of the international journal Plurilogue. She is also an artist, photographer and graphic designer.http://www.plurilogue.com

Human beings are endowed with cognitive agency. Our grasp of the world, and of ourselves, are not merely responses to external stimuli, they are reflective products of human inquiry. The twelve exploratory essays collected in this volume examine forms and limits of human inquiry from a largely sceptical point of view.

At one point in human history it was thought that modern science, especially theoretical physics, is the paradigm of human inquiry. Where does this form of inquiry significantly apply? Are there limits on its claims of truth and objectivity? How much of the vast canvas of human experience does it cover? Where do other forms of inquiry, such as philosophy, religion, and the arts, attain their salience?

With the emergence of scientific study of the human mind itself, these critical questions have taken a more intriguing form in recent decades. Can human inquiry investigate its own nature? Can the scientific theory of language explain the richness of human expression? Can a science of the mind account for human experience?

These probing questions on the scientific enterprise are usually addressed from the outside, as it were, by humanists and critical theorists. In these essays, they are examined from the inside by a philosopher whose primary academic work concerns the study of the human linguistic mind. In that sense, the sceptical inquiry turns on itself.

The twelve essays carve the route from the scientific mode to the literary and artistic modes through a survey of the forms of human inquiry. The book will engage the attention of philosophers, including philosophers of science, literary theorists, cultural studies, and history and sociology of human knowledge.

Nirmalangshu Mukherji is a former Professor of Philosophy at the University of Delhi. He is the National Visiting Professor for Indian Council of Philosophical Research (2015-16). His primary academic interest is the study of language and mind. His publications in this broad area include The Cartesian Mind: Reflections on Language and Music (2000) and The Primacy of Grammar (MIT, 2010).

How about Sri Aurobindo’s celebrated quote, “All life is yoga”? “Yoga is not just a set of techniques but a way of life” is a hackneyed expression which is repeated parrot-fashion in every yoga course, but what actually happens in the course seems to equate yoga with its techniques.

Here is a yoga course with a difference. Sri Aurobindo worked out about a hundred years ago a very powerful synthesis of all the major traditional schools of yoga, and the Mother demonstrated how the path of yoga can be walked every minute of the life while living in the real world. The course being offered would explore the depths of yoga, bring out its role in a life-affirming spiritual quest, and illustrate how yoga enables us to live a life full of love, peace, joy, and above all, fulfillment. Further, the course would enable you to translate this comprehensive view of yoga into a concrete short-term program for your students.

Dec 10, 2012 - The dual sense of meaning as well as money conveyed by the term Arth (that sounds so similar as Earth) is verily a pregnant facet since the significance stretches onto Sat-Chit-Ananda. While bracketing Rtam (rhythm or order) with the moral or ethical may not be always free of problems, still an overarching Harmony handling all impetuosity is easily appreciated. Thus, value can as well denote valence ensuing convenience. [TNM55]